€^t Bnrnlitii uf tjiE Einl 



: 128 
Copy 2 



OF 



REV.O.B.FROTflmGHAM, 



AT 



EBBITT HALL, 

SUNDAY, JULY 19, 1863 



DAVID G. FRANCIS, 506 BROADWAY j 
1863. 



/ ri 



S E B, M N . 



' "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they 
do." — Lukexxii'L, 34. 

In recalling the frightful scenes of the past week — 
our New York Reign of Terror — scenes hsppily 
passed, and now to be as quickly as possible forgot- 
ten, as soon as the lesson of them is learned —these 
words of Jesus come again and again to my mind, 
and give the only key that opens their whole nu-an- 
ing. All through the week they were in my thoughts. 
They would not be drowned by words of fear or 
words of vengeance. The faint, sweet voice which 
spoke them from the cross was louder in ray ear 
than the clamors of the populace, the cries of the citi- 
zens, the rattle of the musketry, or the boom of 
cannon. In that ancient City of Jerusalem there 
was one week of riot. It was instigated and con- 
ducted, for their own political ends, by men who 
called them'selves the eminent friends of governuient, 
of order and of law. The leaders and abettor^ of it 
were the Pharisees, the party of prerogarivc, and 
who called themselves the high representativiis of 
the national idea and constitutional authority. The 
rough material that composed it was the mi-'guided 
mass of the people; its victim was the chu J, tiie 
friend, the benefactor, the Savior of the people. The 
High Priest of Jerusalem might have quieted the [lop- 



ulace, but the victim was not reputed orthodox, and 
the High Priest wished to keep on good terms with 
the High State party. Pilate, the Roman Governor, 
could have put the riot down in a few hours with 
his soldiers, had he chosen to do it ; but he was in 
good understanding with the chief insurgents ; the 
riot was on the whole in his interest; it was insti- 
gated by the pretended friends of the empire — at 
least by those who dreaded any premature outbreak 
against the empire, and who wished to keep in good 
odor with the Roman power. Its object was to 
crush a man whose teaching, conduct, life, seemed 
likely to precipitate such an outbreak, and in crush- 
ing him to crush the people who supported him, and 
the spirit of independence which supported the peo- 
ple. Pilate therefore, kept his regiments out of the 
way, and let the insurrection go on. He yielded to 
the pressure of the mob of respectables, and after a 
show of reluctance, a hypocritical washing of his 
hands, and a sanctimonious rolling up of his eyes, 
gave the populace their victim, well knowing that it 
was his own victim too. There was no better way 
of carrying out his own plans than that of letting 
the rioters carry out theirs ; for they were doing his 
work — the work of suppressing the spirit of Hebrew 
liberty, and breaking the heart of the Hebrew faith. 
How little those people, those mechanics and labor- 
ers of Jerusalem, those hard-handed, poor, cheated, 
simple workmen, knew of the nature of their own 
deed ! How little they knew the men who were 
driving them on to this tragedy of blood ! How lit- 
tle they knew him, the victim, the object of all this 
rage and malediction, at whom they were howling 
and shaking their fists, for whom they were demand- 
ing the cross! Ah! had they known them, their 
leaders, they would have buried them beneath a 
mountain of curses. Had they known him, the vic- 
tim, they would have taken him up in their arms of 



iron, and sheltered him again«t the utmost wrath of 
his enemies ! A.nd he knew it, the victim knew it 
well ! He knew that they stonei and beat him be- 
cause they were ignorant and misguided, and took 
him to be what he was not — their foe, instead of 
their friend. He knew that there was nothing in 
their hearts of bitterness or hate against him, Jesus, 
the man who had spent all his days in going about 
among them doing good. He knew that the terrible 
bitterness and the scathing hate there was in their 
hearts rose fiercely against an imaginary person, 
whom they had been taught to associate with him ; 
and so, when the cross-beams were laid on the 
ground near Calvary, and he was stretched out on 
them, and the brutal soldiers were driving the spikes 
through his hands and feet, their eyes glaring at 
him the while, and their poisonous breath reeking in 
his face, he could only pity them with a pity none 
but such as he could feel. At that moment, least of 
all, when their ignorance, their folly, their crime, 
their insanity was at the height of its consumma- 
tion, could anger or scorn enter his soul ; at that 
moment, least of all, when the frenzy of their mis- 
take was showing itself in all its horrors, could he 
do aught but compassionate them, and pray that 
they might be forgiven. And truly, in that awful 
tragedy, they were the ones to be compassionated, 
for they were the ignorant ones, the weak ones, the 
blind and infatuated ones ; they were ridding them- 
selves of their Savior ; they were crucifying their 
friend ; they were barring against themselves the 
gates of heaven ; they jsvere tearing off from them- 
selves the hands of God ; they were dooming their 
wives and children to 'unspeakable misery; they were 
pulling down on their;* own heads the whole weight 
of the empire from whose wrath they thought them- 
selves escaping. Were they not to be pitied ? Yes, 
more than their victim. He who could at such a 



6 

time preserve his clearness, his calmness, his courage, 
his faith ; he who could at such a time say those 
■words, " Father, forgive them," with such composure, 
was not, even though dying a death of agony and 
shame, a subject for compassion. Admire him, 
honor him, bless him, worship him, shed tears of 
gratitude for the manifestation of such a soul ; but 
do not pity him. Pity them who slew him, and in 
slaying him slew themselves, and hung themselves on 
a cross of humiliation, from which the ages have not 
been able to take them down ! Were they haters of 
goodness ? It was in the name of goodness, as they 
saw it, that they persecuted him. Were they foes of 
religion ? It was as the friends of religion, as they 
had been taught to regard it, that they called for the 
cross. Were they enemies of law and order? It 
was in the very cause of law and order, as they had 
been instructed in it, that they clamored for his 
blood. 

Of all the dreadful and melancholy passages in 
the history of human progress, none, to a thoughtful 
man, are more dreadful or melancholy than those 
which tell how men have resisted, pushed away, 
reviled, cursed, beaten, mobbed, crucified their bene- 
factors. It does seem, as we read them, as if the most 
dreaded thing on earth had been the personal, the 
domestic, the social welfare ; as if the deepest anx- 
iety on the part of men of all sorts was an anxiety to 
escape from their health and salvation ; as if the pro- 
foundest dread was a dread of mending their estates, 
and their uttermost horror was a horror of heaven 1 
It does seem, as we read, as if happiness, prosperity, 
success, were the pet aversion of mankind ; as if the 
signs that were looked for with the most agonized 
apprehension were the signs that the kingdom of 
heaven was at hand. 

My friends, this is not the language of exaggera- 
tion I am using ; it is the language of sober truth, 



and it is language which feebly describes the charac- 
ter of the truth. All up through the stages of human 
progress, from the stage of lowest material to the 
highest spiritual improvement, we meet at every step 
this sickening experience. In the foreground of 
Kaulbach's picture of the Destruction of Babel, two 
bricklayers have thrown down an architect, and are 
pounding him to death with stones, evidently regard- 
ing his drawings as magical signs made to conjure 
the devil with, and charging on him the downfall of 
the walls they were building. The picture is terri- 
bly true to life. It stands in the foreground of every 
historical picture. Thus have the laboring classes 
always treated the men of science, thought, human- 
ity, who were their greatest benefactors. Take as an 
illustration the history of the introduction of labor- 
saving machinery. There can be no question — there 
is no question — among those who look at the matter 
either in a philosophical aspect as social theorists, 
or in a historical aspect as practical people, that the 
introduction of labor-saving machinery, of every kind 
and in every departmenl: of industry, has added 
immensely to the wealth, the comfort, the ease of 
the whole community, and that the class most imme- 
diately and substantially benefitted by it has been 
the working, the laboring class. The use of ma- 
chinery, b}'^ bringing the natural forces to the aid of 
human toil, and hitching our wagons to the stars, as 
Emerson has it, has emancipated human toil from 
the hardest, coarsest, most brutalizing drudgery of 
civilization, and transferred it to more wholesome 
and more lucrative fields of work. It has made 
these fields of work, undiscovered and unsuspected 
before, accessible to industry ; it has led to the crea- 
tion of new branches of industry and art, which 
instantly took up and exercised the liberated 
hands ; it enabled the capitalist to withdraw his 
capital from the employment of the ruder kind of 



8 

manual labor, and to use it to better advantage in 
other ways. Thus fabrics were cheapened, so that 
the multitude could have what the few only had 
before ; wants were multiplied, desires increased ; 
the standard of well-being was raised throughout 
society ; augmented supply and demand stimulated 
each other ; the resources of Nature opened their 
stores of infinite bountifulness ; the capabilities of 
man were unfolded. Instead of throwing men and 
women out of work, the machines multiplied work 
to such an extent that more men and women were 
called for to do it; for the machines must be made, 
ore must be dug, smelted, manufactured into iron and 
steel ; iron and steel must be manufactured into 
mechanism — a process which built up enormous 
cities and called into being vast populations of arti- 
sans. The mechanism when made must be set up, 
and worked by organized armies of operatives, 
camping in towns by themselves ; factories must be 
built. Out of this grew the trade which was required 
to distribute these prodigious fruits of industry ; the 
traffic on land, the commerce on the sea ; the bas- 
kets for carrying all the produce from place to place 
— baskets called wagons, baskets called ships ; the 
construction of places to receive it and label it and 
send it out to its destination ; depots called Sm 
Francisco, New York, Chicago, Liverpool. Where is 
the end of it ? There is no end. The introduction 
of machinery has rendered services too many for 
enumeration and too great for gratitude to the indus- 
trial population of the earth. There is no laborer, 
no field hand, no stevedore or 'longshoreman, no car- 
penter or smith, no spinner, weaver, stocking-maker, 
shirt-sewer, whose existence is not less poor, barren, 
beggarly, precarious, short, miserable for it. And 
yet the outcry of the toiling classes over the globe 
against machines has been one of the most appalling 
outcries of modern time, and has preceded uprisings 



of the most desperate kind. The beneficent machines 
have been madly broken in pieces ; the inventors 
and owners of them have been mobbed ; factories 
have been razed to the ground ; private dwellings of 
rich mill-owners have been pillaged and burned ; 
and the populace have been restrained only by bul- 
lets and bayonets from bringing an utter destruction 
on those whose wealth, enterprise, energy, opened to 
these very laboring people the promise of indefinite 
occupation and indefinite well-being. " Accursed 
bemRchines!" was theory in hovel and in street I 
" Each year their growing power consigns to pau- 
perism millions of laboring people, takes away their 
occupation, with their occupation their earnings, 
with their earnings their bread." Cry sadder and 
more insensate could not be uttered. Of course it 
must be stifled in the blood of those who raised it, 
for society must not perish. Man must improve his 
condition, and if he will be convinced of this only at 
the barricades, then at the barricades he must learn 
it, in the spilling of his own blood ; but every drop 
of blood is a tear, and the smothered cry is a smo- 
thered prayer for forgiveness. 

I have used this illustration because it is so strik- 
ing. But if ignorance can thus make people dis- 
posed to curse and crucify the veiled benefactors 
who would enrich them with material goods, of 
course ignorance would dispose them all the more to 
curse and crucify those who would benefit them in a 
higher degree, which they could even less* understand 
and appreciate. If ignorance makes men mad with 
inventors, how much more will it make them mad 
with reformers, philanthropists, redeemers, who 
bring an uncomprehended and altogethtr fathomless 
benefit to their social and moral estate ! 

We saw this conspicuously and dismally exemplified 
in the events of the past week. The one man who, 
before and above all others, was a mark for the rage 



10 

of the populace — the one man whose name was loud 
in the rabble's mouth, and always coupled with a 
malediction — the one man who was hunted for his 
blood as by wolves, who would have been torn in 
pieces had the opportunity been afiorded, and on 
•whose account the dwelling of a friend was literally 
torn in pieces, was a man who had been the steadfast 
friend of these very people who hungered for his 
blood ; their most constant, uncompromising and 
public friend ; thinking for them, speaking for them, 
writing for them, pleading their cause through the 
press, in the legi5^1ature, from the platform ; excusing 
their mistakes and follies, asserting and reasserting 
their substantial worth and honesty and rectitude, 
advocating their claims as working-people, vindicat- 
ing their rights as men, proposing schemes for the 
safety of their persons, the healihfulness of their 
houses, the saving and increase of their earnings, the 
education of their children, the exemption of their 
homesteads from seizure in cases of debt, the enlarge- 
ment of their sphere of labor, the transferring of their 
families from the crowded city, where they could do 
little more than keep themselves alive by arduous 
toil, to the fruitful lands of the West, where they 
could become noble and self-respecting men and 
women. This was the man whose blood was hun- 
gered for. I need not speak his nnme — you know 
who I mean; a man whom some call visionary, but 
whose visions are all of the redemption of the people ; 
whom some call " fool," but who, if he seem a fool, 
is foolish that the people may be wise ; whom some 
call radical, but whose radicalism is simply a deter- 
mination tliat the popular existence shall have a 
sound, sure and deep root in natural law and moral 
principle ; at all events, a man who has lived for the 
people and suffered for the people, and been laughed 
at when he suffered and because he suffered. This 
was the man whose blood was hungered for. And 



11 

yet the most moderate, kind, considerate of all the 
papers, the last week, was his paper. And I believe 
he, even had he fallen into the hands of his enemies, 
would have said, '' Forgive them, they know not 
what they do." 

Indulge me, my friends, in one more personality, 
I said that the dwelling of a friend was pillaged by 
the mob, under the impression that Mr. Greeley lived 
there. What was this dwelling? Who was this 
friend? The dwelling was one the like of which 
is fare in any city— a dwelling of happiness and 
peace — a home of the tenderest domestic affections — 
a house of large friendliness and hospitality — a refuge 
and abiding place for the unfortunate and the out- 
cast. There was no display of wealth there — there 
was no wealth to di>^play ; yet the house was full of 
things which no wealth cou!d buy. Ic was crowded 
with mementoes. The pieces of furniture in the rooms 
had family histories coimected with them ; chairs and 
tables were precious Tvom association with noble and 
rare people who had gone. Pictures on the walls, 
busts in the parlors, engravings, photographs, books 
spoke of the gratitude or love of some dear giver. 
One room was sacr d to the memory of a noble boy, 
an only son, who died some years ago. There was 
his bust in marble, there were his books, there were 
the prints he liked, the little bits of art he was fond 
of, and all the dear things that seemed to bring him 
back. The whole hjuse was a shrine and a sanctuary. 

And who were the inmates? The master, a man 
whose sympathies were always and completely with 
the working-ptiople, a man of steady and boundless 
humanity. The mistress, a woman whose name is 
familiar to all doers of good deeds in the city of New 
York, and dear to hundreds of the objects of good 
deeds. To the orphan, and friendless, and poor, a 
mother; to th:; ui.tjrtunate a sister ; to the wretched, 
the depraved, the sinful, more than a friend. In the 



Ifml 

city prison her presence was the presence of an angel 
of pitying love ; at Blackwell's Island she was wel- 
come as a spirit of peace and hope. The boys at 
Randall's Island looked into her face as the face of a 
mother. Again and again had she rescued from the 
life of shame the countrywoman, and possibly the 
kindred of these very people who plundered her 
house. For the better part of a year and more she has 
been in camp and city hospitals, nursing their bro- 
thers and sons, performing every menial office. At 
this moment she is at Point Lookout, doing that work, 
amid discomforts and discouragements that would 
daunt a less resolute humanity than hers, giving all 
she has and is to the people, to the wounded, crippled, 
bleeding and broken people ; giving it for the sake 
of the people — giving it that the people may be raised 
to a higher social level 1 And she, forsooth, must be 
selected to have her house pillaged ! She must be 
stabbed to her heart of hearts, stabbed through and 
through, in every one of her affections, by these peo- 
ple for whom her life had been a perpetual process 
of dying ! Why, if they had known this that I have 
been telling you, or but a tenth part of it, those men 
would have defended with their bodies every thread 
of the carpets she trod on. But so it is, and so it 
must be ! Only the best names are ever taken in 
vain on human lips, and they are so taken because 
they are the best ; and best is worst to those who can- 
not understand it. Theodore Winthrop was shot by 
a negro. Did he know what he did ? 

And from whose lips was the word "Abolitionist' 
flung in bitter hate last week? Why, from the lips 
ot men who, had they known who the leading Aboli- 
tionists were and what they purposed, and in what 
interest they labored, would have coupled their name 
with blessing instead of malediction. For, with this 
knowledge they would have been assured that this 
class of men, whom they held to be their enemies, 



13 

■were, more perhaps than any other class of men 
in the community, their friends. They would have 
been assured that here was a class of men who were 
contending earnestly for the sacredness and dignity 
of labor ; who were pleading for free labor all over 
the continent ; who were determined to break down, 
if they could, that wall of caste by which the free 
labor of the North was shut out from fhe boundless 
territory and the bountiful fields of the South, and to 
relieve the bosom of the South itself from that dread- 
ful in«ubus which prevented the development of its 
own resources and the increase of its own wealth ; 
men who saw, as the natural result of their efforts, 
the withdrawal of the black people from Northern 
cities to their more congenial climates — the employ- 
ment of them there on their most congenial work — 
the consequent distribution of labor, according to 
normal and natural laws, over the whole surface of 
the country; and as the effect of this an immense 
increase of production, an enormous demand for every 
kind of labor, and a prodigious multiplication of 
wealth, prosperity, comfort, safety and happiness. 
That this should not be understood, at least that it 
should not be understood as the design and purpose 
of thofee men, seems to me incomprehensible ; but it 
was not, and so we saw the melancholy spectacle of 
men thirsting for the blood of their benefactors, expos- 
ing themselves to death in order to get it and 
actually, in the eff jrt to get it, failing under the fire 
of soldiery. In thinking of it one's bosom is torn w ith 
distracting emotions, and between feeling for the 
persecuted and feeling for the persecutors, one almost 
loses the power of feeling. Could anything be more 
pitiful? Yes, one thing more pitiful there was — the 
savage hunting down and persecution of the negroes, 
as if they, too, were the enemies of these working-peo- 
ple. The poor, inoffensive negroes, most innocent 
part of the whole population ! Most quiet, harmless, 



14 



docile people, who could not stand in the way of the 
white people if they would, and who never thouQjht of 
anything but of keeping out of their way ! These 
the enemies of white labor! As if they had not, for 
these very white people, borne the burden and heat of 
the tropical day, raising the cotton by which we are 
clothed, and the rice by which we are fed ! As if to 
these and the like of these the white people did not 
owe a large share of the manufacturing towns where 
they get their bread! As if the lowest foundation 
stones of this very New York of ours were not 
cemented by their bloody sweat ! As if there were 
too many of them in the country now for the country's 
needs, supposing the country ever to fall into a settled 
and civilized condition again! As if all there are 
might not by and by be required to do the work 
which white labor cannot for a long time, if it can 
ever, safely undertake! Strange complications of 
things! Strange cross purposes of human nature I 
The Southern people would revive the slave trade, 
because they have not black laborers enough, and 
their allies among ourselves would banish or kill all 
the black people, because they interfere with white 
labor! A mutual stabbing at each other's hearts! 
And on each side a stabbing to its own heart ! 

My friends, let us try to look at this thing in the 
light of philosophy and faith. Of course no terms can 
be kept with rioters. They must be put down by 
the swiftest and mo'st crushing force. The swifter 
and more crushing, the more merciful. That is the 
only way .to deaF with them. That is understood ; 
the law of self-preservation declares it. There is no 
necessity for insisting on it here. There is no neces- 
sity here for glorifying soldiers, or magnifying the 
office of the howitzer. Let not the short reign of 
terror from below tempt us to pray for a reign of 
terror from above ! Carbines and sabers are neces- 
sary tools ; but they are very ugly tools in modern 



15 



cities. I do not rejoice in the picket-guard that 
clatters in front of my door. This is the place for 
calm words and thoughts of charity. My friends, I 
am determined to think as well of human nature as 
I can. I will not, under any circumstances, justify 
in my heart the old doctrine of its depravity. I will 
not believe that my fellow-creatures are fiends. It 
hurts me to hear them called so by my friends. 
Need we call them so now ? Recalling the immedi- 
ate occasion of the rioting last week, need we call 
them so? But for that immediate occasion there 
would have been no rioting. There was no original 
thirst for pillage ; there was no original thirst for 
blood. There was at first no raging desire to burn 
and destroy. This came with the rousing of those 
passions which cast all reason out of doors, and turn 
men into maniacs. But let us consider the occasion 
which led to their excitement — the conscription for 
the army. 

1. In the first place, we must remember that to 
such of our fellow-citizens who had been subjects of 
the British crown — Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen 
— such a thing as a conscription was an unknown hor- 
ror, which the government of their native country 
never ventures on ; that to such of our fellow-citizens 
who were Europeans, Continentals, it is a horror 
only too well known. To their minds the very word 
" conscription" brings the bitterest of remembrances, 
the keenest recollections of sorrow and degradation. 
It suggests tyranny in its most arbitrary form, the 
tearing of people from their homes to fight battles 
in whose issue they were not interested. To us con- 
scription means the necessary drafting of men for 
the defence of their native land, for the suppression 
of an insurrection, which threatens the nation's ex- 
istence, for the vindication of free institutions. To 
them it means the violent compulsion of people to 
enter the military service in a jause they do not ua- 



16 

derstand, under an Administration they do not like. 
I do not justify their resistance. I do not palliate in 
the least their method of showing their discontent. I 
do not lessen by a shade the horror that attaches to 
their crime. Bat I am 7iot surprised at it. We have 
taught them lessons of independence ; we have told 
them to be jealous of their rights ; they are not like 
the Southern population, who yield to the conscrip- 
tion law with the sullen complianca of men who have 
no strong sense of personal liberty in their breasts ; 
they resented ; they resisted. We see where they 
were mistaken ; we see where they were wrong ; it 
is easy for us to see it — they did not. Let us deal 
with them as we may or must ; but let us do it as a 
sad necessity — as a necessity laid on us by Law and 
Order, and every social demand, but as a sad neces- 
sity nevertheless. Let us say not " God damn them," 
but " Father, forgive them." If they are assassins, 
we will not forget that they are suicides. 

2. Again : the exemption clause. No doubt it was 
well intended ; no doubt it was carefully meditated and 
thoughtfully inserted in the draft order ; nodoubtexcel- 
lent reasons can be given for it, and cogent arguments 
can be urged in its defence ; but these reasons were 
not given ; these arguments were not stated ; the in- 
tention of the clause was not explained ; and it did 
seem, it could not but seem, to grant a virtual re- 
lease from the draft to the whole comfortable class 
of the community. The sum was just large enough 
to be beyond the poor man's raising ; it was not large 
enough to be an inconvenience to the moderately 
well-conditioned. Was there nothing in that to stir 
the resentful feelings of the poor? Is there nothing 
in that, as we think of it, to mitigate our resentment 
at theirs? How could they understand it ? I con- 
fess I could hardly understand it myself, passionless 
as I was, and prepared to put the best construction 
on the acts of the Administration (myself one of the 



17 

virtually exempted ones by tbat clause). I could not 
at first think it quite wise or fair. How, then, should 
they think it so, who were touched by it to the quick, 
who stood outside of its benefits, and who were not 
prepared to put the best construc*ion on the acts of the 
Administration ? I plead this, ray friends, simply in 
mitigation of judgment on their crime. Of course, 
I see where they deceived themselves, or were misled 
by others. I see the full character and the full bear- 
ing of their mistake. I see now how this very clause, 
"while it sweeps no larger number of them into the 
ranks of the array than would be drawn without it, 
does make more comfortable the families at least 
of those that go. But do iheT/ see it ? Could they 
see it? If they could and did, then my plea for 
them, in that article, drops to the ground. If they 
did not and co.ild not, then my plea for them at the 
bar of reason stands. 

3. We must make allowance, too, for the depth of 
the ignorance among the working-classes, especially 
among foreigners, in regard to the war, its causes, its 
origin, its principles, its purposes, the ends for which 
it is conducted, the issues towards which it is 
pressed ; ignorance respecting the creed and spirit of 
the Administration. It is an ignorance that pervades 
the world, that fills England and France, that pos- 
sesses a large portion of our own citizens, whose 
education, mental habit, or social position, blind them 
to what we think the real nature of the strugj^le in 
■which we are plunged. How much more is it likely 
to possess and blind these? It is an ignorance that 
organizes opposition in every part of the world, and 
even here among our own citizens, who will persist 
in saying, and saying precisely to these misguided 
and unintelligent men, that the war is waged on 
purely partisan principles. Why, then, should the 
opposition of these excite in us so much surprise? 
Oh, the fearful extent to which they have been mis- 



18 

led by the reckless men who rule the politics of the 
country ! It makes me sick to think of it. If there 
ever was a war for the working-classes, t is is one ; 
it is a war for them and theirs peculiarly ; it is a 
war for their position in society, for the rights of 
their industry, for the safety of their homes, lor the 
elevation of their class ; a peoples war against the 
only despotism on the face of the continent ; a war 
of modern ideas against old institutions ; a war of 
the nineteenth century against the feudal ages ; a war 
of liumanity against that which crushes humanity to 
the earth and dishonors it; a war for the free condi- 
tion of human nature ; a war which every man who 
appreciates at all the social significance of our insti- 
tutions, which every man who loves those institu- 
tions which every man who has sought refuge under 
them from foreign limitations and despotism, should 
rush forward eagerly to support, his fortune, his life, 
his duty and honor in his hand. And yet it is a war 
which these people, who are to be the most boun- 
tiful gainers by it, savagely oppose ! 

It is a very mysterious thing in history, this alli- 
ance between the most turbulent and the most 
tyrannical, the most depraved and the most despotic 
portions of society. The most undisciplined, barbar- 
ous, savage members of a community are ever in 
league with the most overbearing, insolent, imperi- 
ous and domineering members of it. They who are 
under the least self-control bow most deferentially 
before those who rule others with the most iron rod. 
The people who were proudest of having turned out 
to a man, in London, for the maintenance of law and 
order, on the day of the great Chartist demonstratioii 
there, were the most immoral class in the city — 
proved by the criminal returns to be nine times as 
dishonest, five times as drunken, and nine times as 
savage as the rest of thj community. (See Spencer's 
Social Statics, p. 424.) 



^v 



19 

In Boston, on the occasion of the rendition of 
Anthony Burns, all the thieves, burglars, cut-throats 
swarmed from their dens and volunteerea with alac- 
rity to enforce the Fugitive Slave law. And now 
the leaders of the Southern Confederacy count, and 
count securely, on the Northern populace. The 
fiercest allies of the only absolutely despotic class 
in the country are the outlaws of society. The men 
•who are fighting for the privileges of the extremest 
"tyranny, the privileges not of ruling merely, but 
literally of owning the laboring class, these men 
have the implicit, the unquestioning, the fanatical 
loyalty of the people who are at the opposite end of 
the social scale — the people who own nothing either 
of fortune, position, influence or character, and whose 
sole relation towards the despots they worship is 
that of mad, savage slaves. In Europe this alliance 
between the despotic and the lawless may be fortu- 
nate for the peace of the community. In our own 
Southern States it is eminently conducive to the tran- 
quility they desire. But when the lawless are here 
and the despotic are there, when the barbarism is in 
New York and the tyranny in Richmond, when the 
elements of discord and turbulence in our Northern 
cities fly to support their iron-handed rulers in the 
seceded States, there ensues a state of things, especi- 
ally in time of war, that is calculated to shake 
society to its foundations, and fill every loyal heart 
with dread. The unruly, as if they felt instinctively 
t'leir lack of self-control, seek a ruler — fly to the 
Strongest to save them from themselves — worship the 
sternest, the mo>t high-handed, the crudest, and by 
that natural 8}nipHthy with brutality are maintained 
in subjection to law. 

Heaven ^peed the time when these heedless, reck- 
less, licentious children of humanity may feel sensi- 
ble of the weight of power without its brutality — 
may reverence authority when it is neither beastly 



20 



\ 



nor cruel — may yield obedience to Order, whose sym- 
bol is not the sword, and to Law, whose badge is 
not the bayonet. But till that time comes, we, my 
friends, with thoughtful minds and sad hearts and 
sober consciences, and souls full as we can make 
them of human charity and good will, must hold in 
our hands those terrible symbols, and in the Christian 
spirit do the ruler's part. 

And let us not, let us not, for anything that has 
happened in these few terrible days, let us not for a 
moment lose faith in our republican institutions, in 
our democratic ideas, in our great princples of human 
liberty. I hear already the shout of derision that 
will be raised against us ; I hear already the pro- 
phecy that our North American civilization is a fail- 
ure, and is coming to its end. But we know it is not. 
We know that to these principles and them alone 
our safety has been due thus far ; and that by bring- 
ing them to greater perfection, by extending them, 
our safety will be secured eternally. We know that 
our danger springs not from the unruly elements in 
human nature, not from the emancipation of the 
masses, not from full enfranchisement of the popu- 
lace, but from the natural and fatal allegiance of the 
lowest animal element in society to the same element, 
equally low, equally animal, equally lawless and 
inhuman, that arrogates and possesses the supreme 
authority and supreme prestige. We know that if 
we can dissolve that allegiance by abasing that 
authority and destroying that prestige, these wild 
elements will in time crystalize at the touch of legiti- 
mate power, and will cling with willing and grate- 
ful obedience to the centres of Order, Equity and 
Law. 

LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 




'■-.■- - ' ':■■'.■ .,^'' ".'s^sV/Jii^'" ^/A.' -a" ■" ■:;' ^-ii»-' " ' '".''.'j.Jf.:' '■" y '.-A'.'' '.t^-^'' ■ 'j^;. ii 



-.ii^^J- '■ '"'..^ aii!.!-' ' ^:.M 






HI; S*. •;• i 









#-^^;.-^- ^^.*Sf 






f^it'^'w'-^ 



*' m 



